by Marion Meade
116 “wonderful”: FSF to Thomas Boyd, May 1924, Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald (New York: Random House, 1980), 141.
117 “had never really accepted”: FSF, The Great Gatsby (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 104.
117 “the best American novel”: FSF to Maxwell Perkins, Aug. 27, 1924, FSF, Life in Letters, 80.
118 “quite alone”: ZSF to EW, June 1924, Beinecke.
118 “bronze and smelled of the sand”: ZSF, Save Me the Waltz, in The Collected Writings of Zelda Fitzgerald (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997), 86. According to Edouard Jozan’s daughter, Martine Jozan Work, he was five feet eight with light brown hair and brown eyes, “a very daring person who loved adventure and always pushed the limits.” When various writers queried Jozan about the Fitzgeralds in the 1960s, he had mostly forgotten them. What he did remember was Zelda’s intelligence and beauty and Scott’s vulgarity and drinking. Other biographical information on Edouard Jozan was supplied by the Service Historique de la Marine and the Association pour la Recherche de Documentation sur l’Histoire de l’Aéronautique Navale. Chase pilots provide support for other aircraft during flight training or testing.
119 “make a pass”: John Dos Passos, The Best Times (New York: New American Library, 1966), 130.
119 “sit around”: Taped interview with Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, May 28, 1933, by Dr. Thomas Rennie, Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic of Johns Hopkins University, F. Scott Fitzgerald Papers, PUL.
119 Scott’s sexual problems: His weak libido probably had more to do with his drinking than with his penis size, because problems with erection, impotence, and premature ejaculation generally accompany alcohol abuse. The Paris brasserie incident is recounted in Ernest Hemingway to Harvey Breit, Aug. 18, 1954, Ernest Hemingway, Selected Letters, 1917–1961 (New York: Scribner, 1981), 834.
120 “I was locked”: ZSF, autobiographical essay, summer 1930, quoted in Nancy Milford, Zelda (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 174.
120 “Big Crisis”: FSF, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Ledger: A Facsimile, ed. Matthew Bruccoli (Washington, D.C.: NCR/Microcard Editions, A Bruccoli Clark Book, 1972), 178.
120 “no one I liked”: FSF to ZSF, summer 1930, Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, ed. Jackson R. Bryer and Cathy W. Barks (New York: St. Martin’s, 2002), 62.
121 “getting brown”: FSF, Ledger, July 1924, 178.
121 “Give me a cigarette”: Gilbert Seldes interview with Nancy Milford, quoted in Zelda, 111.
121 “germs of bitterness”: ZSF, Save Me the Waltz, in Collected Writings, 95.
122 “horribly sick”: ZSF to FSF, summer/fall 1930, Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald, 247.
122 “the year of Zelda’s sickness”: FSF, Ledger, 179.
122 “you took what you wanted”: ZSF, Save Me the Waltz, in Collected Writings, 94.
122 “plodding along”: EF interview, unidentified clipping, c. 1932, TC/LC.
123 “What’s a show boat”: EF, Peculiar Treasure, 288.
123 “vile”: FSF to Maxwell Perkins, c. Aug. 25, 1924, Dear Scott/Dear Max: The Fitzgerald-Perkins Correspondence (New York: Scribner’s, 1971), 76.
123 “the most popular”: Maxwell Perkins to FSF, Sept. 10, 1924, ibid., 77.
123 So Big sales figures: New York Times, May 1, 1925. The novel was filmed three times: in 1924 with Colleen Moore in the role of Selina Peake, in 1932 with Barbara Stanwyck, and in 1953 with Jane Wyman.
123 Scott’s disparaging remarks about Ferber’s work: FSF to Maxwell Perkins, in Dear Scott/Dear Max, January 10, 1920, p. 25; August 25, 1924, p. 76; December 20, 1924, p. 89. FSF to Maxwell Perkins in A Life in Letters, June 1, 1925, p. 118–19.
124 “peter out”: EF quoted in Gilbert, Ferber, 297.
124 “Effendi”: The exotic nickname was coined by Rudyard Kipling, on the basis of Frank Nelson Doubleday’s initials, F.N.D., and happened to suit his outsize personality. In the Middle East the word “effendi” is a title of respect for a man of property and authority.
124 “sing it”: William Allen White to Frank N. Doubleday, Jan. 27, 1925, quoted in Gilbert, Ferber, 385.
125 “Angel Child”: Autobiography of William Allen White (New York: Macmillan, 1946), 463.
125 Previous bestselling Pulitzer winners: His Family (1918) by Ernest Poole and The Age of Innocence (1921) by Edith Wharton.
126 “pleased”: EF to Flora May Holly, May 5, 1925, University of Delaware, Flora May Holly Papers.
126 “after having had her nose straightened”: New York Times, May 1, 1925. The literary establishment would continue to overlook Ferber. In Exile’s Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920s (New York: Viking, 1951), the critic Malcolm Cowley omitted her from his account of important American writers. In the 1950s The Paris Review began conducting interviews for its Writers at Work series but apparently did not find her worthy of inclusion.
126 Minick reviews: New York World, Sept. 25, 1924; New York Sun, Sept. 25, 1924. Burns Mantle selected Minick for inclusion in The Best Plays of 1923–24. It was filmed three times: Welcome Home (1925), The Expert (1932), and No Place to Go (1939).
127 “My name is Edna”: EF, Peculiar Treasure, 290.
128 “a small cluck”: DP interview, Columbia Oral History Collection.
128 “the worst fuck”: Ruth Goodman Goetz interview.
128 “close harmony did a cool”: DP to Robert Benchley, quoted in Alexander Woollcott, The Portable Woollcott (New York: Viking, 1946), 186.
SIX: 1925
129 “a ruin of thickets”: Maxwell Perkins to FSF, Aug. 8, 1924, Dear Scott/Dear Max: The Fitzgerald-Perkins Correspondence (New York: Scribner’s, 1971), 75.
130 “In God’s name”: Alexander Woollcott, The Portable Woollcott (New York: Viking, 1946), 188.
130 “Does anybody but myself”: Heywood Hale Broun, Whose Little Boy Are You? A Memoir of the Broun Family (New York: St. Martin’s, 1983), 48.
131 “as little ladies do”: DP, The Portable Dorothy Parker (New York: Penguin, 1976), 103.
132 “these amusing”: Raoul Fleischmann, untitled reminiscence, New Yorker Records.
132 “Sunday February 15”: Franklin P. Adams, The Diary of Our Own Samuel Pepys, 1911–1925 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1935), 1:505.
133 “It is difficult”: Jane Grant, Ross, the New Yorker, and Me (New York: Reynal, 1968), 221.
133 “a skirt”: Ibid., 187–88.
135 “Pink marabou”: Adams, Diary, 1:516.
135 “She’s such a nice girl”: Alvan Barach interview with James Gaines.
135 “Ah, look, Harold”: DP to Harold Ross, n.d., New Yorker Records.
135 “happier than her happiest”: William Allen White, World’s Work, June 1930.
135 “not a single one”: Garson Kanin, Hollywood (New York: Viking, 1974), 284.
137 “a nice gentlemanly mortgage”: EM to Cora Millay, June 22, 1925, Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952), 195.
138 “nearly daft in the bean”: Ibid.
138 “swell”: FSF to EW, spring 1925, FSF, The Crack-Up, ed. Edmund Wilson (New York: New Directions, 1945), 271.
138 “genuine Louis XV”: Sara Mayfield, Exiles from Paradise (New York: Delacorte, 1971), 110.
139 “It was all”: Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (New York: Scribner, 1964), 148.
141 “great trip”: Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, June 9, 1925, Ernest Hemingway, Selected Letters, 1917–1961 (New York: Scribner, 1981), 162.
141 Hemingway’s recollections of the luncheon at 14, rue de Tilsitt: See A Moveable Feast, 177–84. He evidently wrote two versions of the occasion but discarded the more favorable one.
142 “worth seeing”: Ernest Hemingway to Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, quoted in James Mellow, Hemingway: A Life without Consequences (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992), 291.
142 “very handsome”: FSF to Gertrude Stein, June 1925, FSF, A Life in Letters (New York: Scr
ibner’s, 1994), 115.
143 “I never saw her look”: EM to Cora Millay, May 10, 1925, Letters, 192.
143 “rafts of caviar”: Ibid.
143 “putting your car”: James Thurber, The Years with Ross (Boston: Little, Brown, 1959), 69.
144 “not just crazy”: Rebecca West interview with Stanley Olson, in Olson, Elinor Wylie: A Life Apart: A Biography (New York: Dial Press, 1979), 258.
144 “fragile china deer”: William Rose Benét, “The Dust Which Is God,” in ibid., 163.
144 “I just couldn’t imagine”: Arthur Ficke interview with Stanley Olson, in ibid., 251.
145 “life and death”: Ibid.
145 “perfectly terrible”: Ibid.
145 “unfortunate affair”: Ring Lardner to FSF, Aug. 8, 1925, Correspondence of F. Scott Fitzgerald (New York: Random House, 1980), 176.
146 “constantly cock-eyed”: Ibid.
146 “after her all hours”: Ruth Goodman Goetz interview.
147 “forever”: EM to Frances Shapli, July 1, 1925, Berg.
147 “Our home”: EB to Arthur and Gladys Ficke, 1925, Beinecke.
147 “Very little gin”: EM to Millay family, July 28, 1925, Letters, 195.
148 Snow White opera: An operatic version of the Snow White fairy tale, Schneewittchen, was completed by the Swiss musician Heinz Holliger in 1998.
148 “six workmen”: EM to Cora Millay, Aug. 20, 1925, Letters, 100.
149 “the big nigger Julia”: EM to Millay family, July 28, 1925, Berg; edited version in Letters, 195.
149 “doubtful”: Maxwell Perkins to FSF, April 20, 1925, Dear Scott/Dear Max, 101.
149 “extraordinary”: Maxwell Perkins to FSF, April 25, 1925, ibid., 102.
149 Notable novels of 1925: Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Glasgow’s Barren Ground, Mann’s Death in Venice, Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Stein’s The Making of Americans, Dos Passos’s Manhattan Transfer.
149 “I’m not depressed”: FSF to Harold Ober, May 28, 1925, As Ever, Scott Fitz—Letters between F. Scott Fitzgerald and His Literary Agent, Harold Ober, 1919–1940 (London: Woburn, 1973), 78.
150 Gatsby reviews: New York World, April 13, 1925; New York Times, April 19, 1925; New York Herald Tribune, April 19, 1925; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 18, 1925.
150 “new book”: Ruth Hale quoted in A. Scott Berg, Max Perkins, Editor of Genius (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1978), 106.
150 “1000 parties”: FSF, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Ledger: A Facsimile, ed. Matthew Bruccoli (Washington, D.C.: NCR/Microcard Editions, A Bruccoli Clark Book, 1972), 179.
150 “There were Americans”: ZSF, Save Me the Waltz, in The Collected Writings of Zelda Fitzgerald (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997), 99.
152 “remarkable things”: ZSF, “Caesar’s Things,” PUL.
153 “If you drink too much”: ZSF quoted in Nancy Milford, Zelda (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 111. Source is Calvin Tomkins’s letter to Nancy Milford, Jan. 4, 1966. According to Gerald and Sara Murphy’s belated recollections, twenty-five years later to Calvin Tomkins for a New Yorker article, this mishap took place in 1924. But the year was actually 1925, as dated by Zelda’s own statement only five years later (ZSF to FSF, c. summer/fall 1930, Prangins), plus Scott’s notation in his Ledger (p. 179) for August 1925 (“Zelda drugged”). Zelda identified the drug as Dial, but that brand of allobarbital was not manufactured until 1927; the product she took must have been similar, however. Some writers have interpreted the overdose as an attempted suicide, but there is no basis to see it as anything other than a simple accident, most likely caused by a crossreaction between a powerful barbiturate and alcohol.
153 “Zelda and me”: FSF to Maxwell Perkins, Aug. 28, 1925, Dear Scott/Dear Max, 119.
153 “We were happy”: Gerald Murphy to FSF and ZSF, Sept. 19, 1925, Linda Patterson Miller, Letters from the Lost Generation: Gerald and Sara Murphy and Friends (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 14.
154 “What are you having”: DP quoted in John Keats, You Might As Well Live (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970), 85.
154 “Oh, Dorothy”: Johnny Weaver, quoted in Peggy Wood interview with James Gaines.
154 “almost illiterate”: New York Herald Tribune, Oct. 13, 1963.
154 “never read anything”: Esquire, Sept. 1959.
154 “I thought”: Thurber, Years with Ross, 17.
155 “the worms slip by”: DP, “Epitaph,” in Portable Dorothy Parker, 79.
155 “crushed her”: DP, “Big Blonde,” in ibid., 209.
155 “psychosomatic medicine”: Alvan Barach interview with James Gaines.
155 “a lot of tender expectancies”: Ibid.
156 “cheap people”: DP to Seward Collins, March 22, 1927, Beinecke.
157 “If you don’t stop”: Robert Benchley quoted in James R. Gaines, Wit’s End: Days and Nights of the Algonquin Round Table (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977), 116.
SEVEN: 1926
158 “nothing serious at all”: EM to Cora Millay, Aug. 20, 1925, Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952), 200.
159 “What is the good”: EB to Arthur and Gladys Ficke, n.d. 1925, Beinecke.
159 “way down in the mouth”: EB to Arthur and Gladys Ficke, Dec. 30, 1925, Beinecke.
159 “roaringly, indecently”: EB to Arthur and Gladys Ficke, Dec. 1925, Beinecke.
160 “my sick poet”: EB to Arthur and Gladys Ficke, Nov. 4, 1925, Beinecke. Millay’s headaches remained undiagnosed. Headaches may have dozens of causes, including food allergies, sinusitis, stress, constipation, anemia, brain disorders, hypertension, and bowel problems, but victims of chronic pain are also known to suffer from psychological problems and personality disorders.
160 “curse”: EB to Arthur and Gladys Ficke, Dec. 30, 1925, Beinecke.
160 “a m. of the b.”: EM to Arthur and Gladys Ficke, Jan. 2, 1926, Beinecke.
160 “is gaining strength”: Cora Millay to KM, Feb. 4, 1926, Berg.
161 “unerring sense of selection”: DP, New Yorker, Oct. 29, 1927.
162 “God, what a night”: Edmund Wilson, The Twenties (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975), 346.
162 “She is quite all right”: Robert Benchley to Gertrude Benchley, Feb. 1926, Mugar.
162 “He said it was funny”: Ernest Hemingway to Louis and Mary Bromfield, March 8, 1926, Ernest Hemingway, Selected Letters, 1917–1961 (New York: Scribner, 1981), 195.
163 “the only thing in life”: Seward Collins, college essay, Feb. 1920, Seward Collins Papers, Beinecke.
163 “leaped around like a flea”: Burton Rascoe, We Were Interrupted (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1947), 160.
164 “extremely sensitive”: Seward Collins to Havelock Ellis, 1926, Beinecke.
164 “Bullfighting, bullslinging”: Sara Mayfield, Exiles from Paradise (New York: Delacorte, 1971), 114.
165 “Ernest, don’t you think”: Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (New York: Scribner, 1964), 184.
165 Gatsby the play: The dramatic adaptation of The Great Gatsby opened on Broadway on February 2, 1926, with James Rennie in the title role, and ran 112 performances.
166 Sara Murphy’s corn: John Dos Passos, The Best Times (New York: New American Library, 1966), 149.
166 “the great unhappiness”: ZSF, “Caesar’s Things,” PUL.
166 “the oldest trick”: Hemingway, Moveable Feast, 207.
167 “I hope you die”: Calvin Tomkins, Living Well Is the Best Revenge (New York: Viking, 1971), 121. Games like ringer were played in a ten-foot-diameter ring with thirteen marbles arranged in the center of a cross.
168 “July 21, 1926”: EM to KM, July 21, 1926, Berg.
168 “everyone gets up”: NM to KM, July 1926, Berg.
169 “terribly sorry”: EM to KM, Sept. 5, 1921, Berg.
169 “I hate to bother you”: Tom Smith to Seward Collins, June 17, 1926, Beinecke.
170 “one of yo
u is lying”: DP, “Unfortunate Coincidence,” in The Portable Dorothy Parker (New York: Penguin, 1976), 96.
171 “Tell her”: Tom Smith to Seward Collins, June 29, 1926, Beinecke.
171 “Everyone seems to be”: Tom Smith to Seward Collins, Aug. 27, 1926, Beinecke.
171 “so I went”: New Yorker, Sept. 8, 1927.
171 “Why, that dog”: “Toward the Dog Days,” McCall’s, May 1928.
172 “Time doth flit”: Allen Saalburg interview.
172 “My Sewie”: DP to Seward Collins, various correspondence, 1926–1927, Beinecke.
172 “Understand now”: Edwin Pond Parker to DP, Nov. 3, 1926, Beinecke.
172 “counteracts all the acid”: EF to Aleck Woollcott, July 8, 1926, Houghton.
173 “In the evening”: EF, Show Boat (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1926), 303.
173 “only too glad”: New York Times, Sept. 3 and 4, 1926.
174 “your answer was negative”: EF to Nelson Doubleday, Sept. 1926, quoted in Julie Goldsmith Gilbert, Ferber: A Biography (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978), 378. Ferber continued to be a Doubleday author the rest of her life, but the relationship remained contentious. When the house wanted to sign an author who shared her last name, she went off the deep end. Her editor feared she might “disappear in smoke.” With no way to calm her, Ken McCormick allowed the conflagration to subside naturally. He decided the screaming must have constituted “her sex life.” Even by the standards of literary prima donnas, Edna’s outbursts could be frightening (Columbia Oral History Collection).
174 “Sue and be damned”: EF, A Peculiar Treasure (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1939), 309.
174 “She never saw him again”: EF, Show Boat, 364.
175 “Oh King”: EB to Arthur and Gladys Ficke, Sept. 11, 1926, Beinecke.
175 “Were there ever”: EB to Arthur Ficke, Jan. 1, 1927, Beinecke.
175 “who more sincerely”: Arthur Ficke gloss on EB letter to Arthur and Gladys Ficke, Dec. 30, 1925, Beinecke.
176 “thrilling”: EM to Cora Millay, Dec. 6, 1926, Letters, 211.
176 “pinkey-pink cocktails”: EB to Arthur Ficke, November 1925, Beinecke.